This course covers communication skills that engineering leaders use every day to motivate, inspire, and support the people in their organizations.
Speaking and writing are basic leadership communication skills. (We covered these topics in the Specialization course 1 and 3.) However, leaders also need to be skillful interpersonal communicators. Modern business requires communication skills that are effective across cultures, generations, and genders. Communication is also a key skill in building your personal brand. Leaders need to look, act, and speak like leaders. Another important leadership skill is the ability to handle difficult, emotional communications with employees, supervisors, and colleagues. Finally, engineers are often at the center of crisis communication.
In this course, you will learn
1. How to communicate in a global environment,
2. How to communicate across cultures, generations, and genders
3. How to use communication to build your personal brand, communicate your values, and your leadership promise
4. How to handle high-stakes, emotionally charged, difficult conversations with employees, supervisors and your colleagues
5. How to handle crisis communication
Required Material Disclaimer- The purchase of a case study is necessary to complete this course, as it is tied to an assessment. This case is an excellent illustration of the typical business situations requiring skillful handling of difficult conversations. Currently, the cost associated with this case study is $8.95 USD and is subject to change.
Selected materials courtesy of Communiation Faculty at Rice University - all rights reserved.

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Week 3: How to Handle Difficult Conversations

Strong interpersonal communication skills are crucial in effective leadership. Tough conversations happen when we disagree about important issues, and knowing how to handle difficult conversations can keep a team or an organization running smoothly. In this module, you’ll learn how to handle disagreements and diverging opinions and how to use conflict to strengthen teams and organizations.

Преподаватели

Gayle Moran

Lecturer in Professional and Engineering Communication

Beata Krupa

Lecturer in Professional and Engineering Communication

Текст видео

Let's talk about some consistent themes in what Beth told us. I will talk about two mental habits that you should develop to help you handle difficult conversations. You need to diagnose your own style of reacting in conflict. And you need to learn to notice when you are talking about facts, and when you are talking about your own assumptions about what is happening. Difficult conversations are challenging because they trigger emotions. When the stakes are high and we strongly disagree, we stop talking about specific issues. We start fighting for our identities. The first step to successfully handling difficult conversations is to become aware of your own pattern of reacting, your emotions, and perceptions. For example, you need to give negative feedback to one of your employees. You need to have him perform better because the project needs to be finished on time. You expected your employee will be either be defensive or aggressive. You are apprehensive because you don't want to be seen as a mean and negative person. All these feelings and emotions have a high potential to make the feedback a difficult conversation. And sure enough, you meet and the discussion quickly turns into a conflict. Your employee starts getting emotional, defends himself, and blames others, refuses to agree to any changes you are suggesting. Your emotions go up too. Your feedback is more and more ineffective. Well, you need some mental preparation to handle the situations like this. Start with yourself. Ask yourself what is my own style of handling difficult conversations? A lot of people avoid confrontation. For example, they sugar coat difficult feedback. When faced with someone else's strong response, they withdraw and pretend that they agree. Others tend to fight when in the midst of a disagreement. They become aggressive and start attacking the person they disagree with. Since, in either case, the problem is not being solved, your communication is ineffective. Knowing your own habitual reactions to conflict will help you manage your responses. Monitor what you are saying, and how you are saying it. Take a quiz in the activity after this lecture to self-diagnose your reaction patterns. If you notice that you are going into a defensive mode, make yourself go back to a candid conversation. If you're style is to fight and attack in the midst of a disagreement, and you see yourself doing it again, stop and change your style. Knowing your own response style is the first step in preparing for difficult conversations. Another mental habit you need to develop is to always ask. When the conversational heat goes up, am I reacting to facts or to my own interpretation of facts? As Doctor Van Kleek explained in the leadership specialization of this certificate, we tend to forget facts and then react to the stories we tell ourselves about these facts. Chris Argyris' concept of the ladder of inferences explains how we think when faced with a difficult interpersonal situation. We don't simply and calmly consider everything what is happening. We observe a behavior. We selectively focus on some facts we notice. Then we interpret these facts based on our past experience, cultural norms, and personal emotions. We make assumptions about what is happening and we replace facts with conclusions based on these assumptions. We start believing our interpretations, and we act, not based on facts, but based on our beliefs. We go through this thinking process in many situations, but we do it most often during difficult conversations. Let me give you an example of a classic ladder of inferences my husband used the other day. He has a new manager. Three weeks pass by and his new manager did not have time to meet with Paul, my husband, in person. They exchange emails and phone calls but no meeting. What is my husband's interpretation of this fact? The manager is thinking about bringing his own people, Paul concluded. He's not interested in working with me. He will replace me soon with someone he knows. I need to start looking for a new job. Now, imagine my husband's first meeting with his manager. Paul will be super defensive, insecure, and nervous. His conversation will be most probably a difficult conversation simply because of the assumptions Paul made. So when faced with a difficult situation, we need to watch for our tendency to go up the ladder of inferences. We need to remember to go back to facts and ask, what emotions make me think this way? Where do they come from? What is real, and what are my assumptions? The important part here is to remember that your story is not false, but it's based not on facts, but on your own perceptions. The other person has a similar story, his or her own perceptions in their mind. The only way to have a fruitful conversation is to examine each other's stories. This would require a switch in a conversation. When you notice that you are no longer talking about facts but interpretations stop, and talk about your assumptions. Controlling your own style of handling different conversations and learning how to recognize stories behind your own and others' reactions will help you be much calmer and effective during difficult conversations. Next, let's talk with Beth about some specific things you can do and say when in the midst of a challenging conversation.